This Illusion Called Power
by enaskoritsi
Summary: Where most people discovered happiness in truth and honesty, Mrs. Lovett found it in manipulation and deception. With her silver tongue, Mr. Todd was hers to have, hers to love. It was a shame that in the end, she forgot who was controlling who.


_Disclaimer : _I do not own Sweeney Todd : The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, its characters, or anything associated.

_Author's Note : _I haven't wrote for Sweeney Todd in a long time, so I hope I still have it. Ending's a little off, but I'm tired.

Please review; it means the utmost to me.

Thanks for reading.

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.:. This Illusion Called Power .:.

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"If you don't control your mind, someone else will."

John Allston

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Mrs. Lovett did not believe herself to be, in any shape or form, a foolish woman.

She had survived through the most desolate of times, when her shop was infested with various breeds of indestructible beetles and foul rats that often died in the middle of her dusty floor because they had chosen the wrong shop to call home. During that time, when just the thought of her pies gave people a sickness doctors would often laugh at grimly, Mrs. Lovett had managed to persevere when the people London expected to walk by any day and see a lack of the haggard, aging woman through the scratched window.

Times had been worse before, but they had also been better. The, though she did not address it, bitter woman, rotting from the inside but barely living on unknowingly, knew that all she needed was an opportunity, and once it came, she would leap forward with abandon and grab it like the dirty children who rushed and pushed each other aside when a scrap of bread or bruised piece of fruit slipped from someone's cart and tumbled unto the stained streets.

Now, oh, what an opportunity had flown like a guardian angel into her desperate hands.

But that's not all he was, no of course not. Mr. Todd, wondeful, trusting Mr. Todd, was so much more than that. He was a blessed second chance, one Mrs. Lovett had never predicted or expected to grace her lonely life. She had long since wobbled past her prime, and she was now as broken and faded as the lifeless flowers from the upper room years past that would twist into their mangled bouquets for a death bride. Here, in the form of a confused, handsome man, one she had wanted in the cruelty of life and the pity of dreams alike, God had gifted her with the possibility of happiness, and one of sweet, spectacular love.

Like everything that came in life, Mrs. Lovett knew that the package she had been presented with would not be a simple, facile one. The coarse strings keeping it closed from her intense gaze were tightly bound, wound over the almost impenetrable concrete box dozens of times over, almost like a second wrapping. The stiff paper that was bundled around the contents was made of indestructible steel itself, refusing to give no matter how many thousands of times her nails clawed at the surface insatiably.

Still, as Mrs. Lovett often mused while beating the dough on her molding countertop into submission, one could almost find a sure answer for any situation. Luckily, she had known hers as soon as the bewildered Mr. Todd opened her door with those wide, fearful pools of dying hope to meet her own shining, adoring depths.

It was all about control.

Mr. Todd had his vengeance, yes, and that need consumed him like a raging fire causing his soul to bobble and froth, sometimes spilling over with violent, tumultuous splashes. He could not constrain it, and had no desire to try, instead allowing his rage and malice to scald anyone who was reckless or idiotic enough to step in his bleeding path.

Mr. Todd had tossed the reigns into the blistering wind, and Mrs. Lovett had been there to catch them.

She knew they were hers once she had him seated in her garish parlor, his weary and battered form a blaring disturbance against the dreary colors that graced the walls. Mrs. Lovett had sat across from him, spewing blood-coated truths that slid down Mr. Todd's throat and settled in his stomach like poisonous snakes, vehement and unsettling. She had created the wounded husband with a lost lover, returning to an empty, cobwebbed, and dilapidated building occupied only by another who had been invisible before. Mrs. Lovett wrote the script and cast the parts, knowing who was perfect as the comforting, accepting heroine that would lead the poor hero with his dashed illusions until they found happiness.

Knowledge is power, and with power comes to ability of manipulation.

The golden apple came into her vision, however, at the first, and almost only, outing the sadly mismatched pair would ever have. A journey into town, posing as ordinary people with mundane, average agendas, had quickly turned into a budding revelation. There, planted perfectly in the square, had stood the stout, greasy figure that Mr. Todd had known too well.

Those coal eyes, hellish pits that Mrs. Lovett could only call beautiful, had narrowed upon the unfortunate prey that only knew ignorance, dusting off his expensive jacket and adjusting the top hat balanced on his balding head. Urged forward by the vision, one pale hand, trembling with eagerness, had inched towards a belt that was less like a strap of leather and more of a sentence to the underworld below or above, who could know.

The silver demon had reached out to him, allowing its glistening, controlling fingers to attach to his cold skin and extend the limb into something more. Cries of pernicious fascination had shattered the air, unheard by the common people trudging through the streets, and the force of the determination was enough to crumble a brick wall if it stood against.

Mrs. Lovett, with a single gesture and word, had soothed it all.

All it had taken was her commanding hand on his arm, and a kind yet stern,

"Wait."

That's all it had taken. Without a grunt of argument or frustration, Mr. Todd had allowed his subdued razor to slip silently back into its grave, bowing his head towards the wet cobblestones like a scolded child. Mrs. Lovett had led him gently to the crowd, allowing his fervent fixation of revenge and justice to find a target on another man, someone who held less power, if also less guilt and was thus not as deserving.

Mrs. Lovett had long ago tossed her morales to the wind, for where could proper actions advance her in the uncaring streets of London, where only the rustling of paper pounds brought any joy?

There was no repentance at the passing of the frivolous competitor when Mrs. Lovett had dragged his lifeless, satin-clad corpse towards the cellar. Perhaps there was a bit of irritability at the hours of painful scrubbing it took to hide, if not wash away the sin completely, the evidence of the ungodly act that had occurred upstairs that afternoon, leaving her with scrapped, reddened knees and bruised elbows.

These complaints and black holes stretching out in her core meant little compared to the revelation bestowed upon Mrs. Lovett the day before. She now knew she could control the beast wearing down the floor that had once had been glossy and clean when it belonged to a promising young couple and their sickeningly adorable daughter. There was hope, assurance, that Mrs. Lovett had the ability to twirl his needs around her own skeletal, worn fingers, transform the almost-monster that had returned to her into the breath-taking man she knew he could be; finally renewing her own life with him.

The times proved her right. With each grain of sand that fumbled through her one personal silver hourglass, Mrs. Lovett's pallid skin grew a healthy, rosy shade, and customers were often dazed by the brightness of her smile, as if they stared right into the sun and had been blinded by its unfurling rays. Her once impoverished and patched dresses bloomed like fairytale blossoms into dazzling creations of the finest fabrics, embroidered jewels glistening under the now stronger lights that encouraged customers like moths to a streetlamp.

Mr. Todd stayed in the cage he had built for himself, adding more iron bars each day with his ever sharpened fixations, trying to keep himself hidden from the polluted world that bustled and spewed below him. He chose who lived and who died, and that made him settled and content enough.

Either way, Mrs. Lovett always knew she could manipulate her way into whatever she wanted.

She managed to coddle herself an assistant, a needy youth with an eagerness that she knew would ease the multitude of burdens weighing down her thin shoulders; it had only taken a practiced guile, an easily shrouded siren call to turn Mr. Todd from bloodthirsty to withdrawn and to gain the mumbled consent she really did not need.

Mrs. Lovett had managed to hoodwink the heavens and steal a makeshift family like a devil herself.

Her skills never faltered, even when she wasn't tempting Mr. Todd to bend to her desires over material necessities and wants, or petty, negligible desires. Mrs. Lovett had taught herself to cool his tempers which, if left unchecked, could lead to unspeakable ruin that would only end with everything she knew and loved in shambles. The tremendous waves that were always ready to crash down onto her sandy seaside shore grew effortless to tame, the easy remedy of a dash of patience and soft-spoken words always able to do the trick.

Everything was perfect, or as near it could be; since Mrs. Lovett paraded through the world with her rose-colored vision, it was impossible to tell which.

With the routine happiness, the caution and tension faded, and Mrs. Lovett pranced upstairs each day with a noticeable confidence and none of the previous sneaky trepidation that had marked her way.

This is where she had begun her failure.

When something rises too high for its own good, it is only natural for it to be brought down, and Mrs. Lovett went crashing.

Books could be filled with her demise, analyzing the mind she had deemed to simple, the minefields she had forgotten about until she stood in the very center of each explosive patch. While Mrs. Lovett spent her days in lavish circumstance, reveling and basking in the control and power she exercised in what she believed to be loved, she forgot the greatest folly, always present and ready to pull her below.

Everyone person in this dangerous world is a player getting played.

Sweeney Todd was not one to allow orders from anyone; it was he who chose what was best for his wanted ends. He had spent his time with Mrs. Lovett soundless hibernation, cajoling her without words and allowing her to move her game pieces on his own board. To his own fault, he believed her to be his partner, someone who was reaching for the same prizes, and thus had allowed her to fake direction for the great length of time he had given her.

Once she herself proved this untrue, that Mrs. Lovett was nothing more than a greedy, selfish witch, hoping to incase him in her less than magical lies and undeserving of even the razor itself, Sweeney Todd knew her disposal was long overdue.

In the end, he watched her burn with pleasure, closing the door on her and her stupidity forever.

Mr. Todd proved that Mrs. Lovett was, in every shape and form, a foolish woman.


End file.
